Heh, shows how much I pay attention. Don't feel bad, iirc, everyone lost their id + post count when the old java-gaming.org site went away. I'd probably be at 200 by now if that hadn't have happened....

EDIT wasn't there talk of restoring the old boards for informational purposes?

EDIT wasn't there talk of restoring the old boards for informational purposes?

Oh, they're still accessible, if you know where to look!

I have to say I'm not sure there's any value in resurrecting the posts at this late stage. Technology ages very badly, and Java has aged worse than most. If the old posts were resurrected when the new board went live, that would be a different matter - but now... *shrug* Things have changed a lot since October 2002.

(And I seem to remember the attempts to resurrect the more recent Newless Clubies board failed as well. Again, not a forum that is very useful 6 months down the line, so no big loss.)

But yes, the old board. I wonder if it's worth someone either writing a screen scraper or just spidering the lot, just so there's an external archive somewhere of it?

Edit: *scratches head* Is this the third forum we've had? Or the second? I seem to recall two transition periods, but the old "discus" and the current YaBB dovetail nicely, and I thought when the JGO forums first opened we were using discus...

Perhaps that should also be a "#num posts viewed" tag, because sometimes one doesn't write much but learns a lot by reading others' posts (--> big assumption? probably not :p)

This way people would feel that have been in the discussions too, although not really contributing much, spectators do play some kind of role.

//btw: this post was just a lame excusion to increase my own post count. Sorry. Now you have the chance to reply something silly too, increasing yours in return. Perhaps, there should be a "Post Count Increament" Thread. Where all newbies can add a few empty posts everytime they feel they've learnt something

HaHaha! I think Cas have more valuable things to say than me though :p

My reality is that I'm England (not my home country!), trying to finish a project report before term starts, and since everyone else is panicing about final exams, social interaction with other humans got reduced nearly to zero. So that's how this forum and I became friends ;p

I'm not religous, but I do believe in good chocolate, so Happy Easter for everyone There are some nice easter eggs at : http://www.eeggs.com

Why do people actually care about their status (Newbie, God, etc.) anyways? It doesn't really say anything (unless you starting hitting the 5000s or something like that)...

That's more like a psychological/sociological question I agree with you that it doesn't really say anything, moreover people shouldn't give much importance to status within a community. But, many people would argue that social recognition is vital to many aspects of one's success, and humankind's too as a whole. It's not enough to make a good videogame, and sell it anonymously. You mostly want to attach your name to the game, (if you think is good), because sometimes only you and your mom knowing that you achieved something is not enough to keep you going.

It's not very wise to care *too* much about what others think, but it's nevertheless understantable that people want other people's respect in areas that they devote their lives to. Be that in professional golf or in the pub near their house. But note that status is just the reflection of one's attitude, there's nothing wrong with it by itself. Only when people become too much aware of that, and think it of as a label that things can go in the wrong way.

One of these days, I watched a lecture by Mandelbrot (from mitworld.mit.edu) and one can see that he is very arrogant and he said at least 10 times about the fact that *he* was the one who coined the term fractal. That really annoined me, and I didn't understand why it wasn't enought to have coined the term and 'period'. But maybe some people just take acknowedgements of their work *very* serisouly, and the bottom line is that people are free to advertise their work in any way they like. Hopefully the type of advertisement will not affect their work, but only the image you have of their values.

Hahahaha. But you can see that the easter eggs only work for old verions of microsoft office and so on.. I found that link via this hilarious article: http://www.biznix.org/whylinux/windows/easter.html -- quite old too. I wonder if that was actually a problem inside Microsoft, and how managers could stop people from putting code into products.

Why do people actually care about their status (Newbie, God, etc.) anyways? It doesn't really say anything (unless you starting hitting the 5000s or something like that)...

Tbh, I don't think anyone actually does. Its a just another jokey type thing for people to make fun of. Its normally pretty evident from what the poster writes (and in what style) whether its worth taking on board.

Why do people actually care about their status (Newbie, God, etc.) anyways? It doesn't really say anything (unless you starting hitting the 5000s or something like that)...

It's part of a suite of psychological tricks to build, grow, support, and retain communities. Bulletin boards are normally setup by people intending to build a community, so they come with some of these tricks built-in (although, notably, most aren't very good at it - this one (YABB) really ****s-up in many ways due to naivety or incompetence by the programmers).

Basically, the status one serves several purposes:

Increases people's emotional attachment to the board (note: "churn" is the biggest single problem faced by communities, after growth). This is true of everyone, subconsciously, unless they fight it hard

Sets up "gurus" within the community, by making their status explicit. I'm not talking about the title, I'm talking about the number of posts. If you saw an argument between me and someone with 5 posts, and neither of us had mentioned any background (e.g. "I founded THQ") then you'd be inclined to use the number of posts to decide who to trust. (nb: this is not true for everyone, a lot of us are too cynical for that - but it does work for others). NB: it's not intended to help the "gurus" win arugments! The point is that it helps the *community* (especially new members! Allowing them to "hit the ground running"...) to understand who it's most influential members are, and this has well-documented positive effects on the growth, retention, and "spirit" of the community, creating virtuous circles.

Makes it easier for board admins to find potential recruits for moderator status etc - i.e. free, unpaid employees who will work tirelessly to help build the community. A lot of BB's these days have a default config that when you reach XXX posts you *automatically* become a moderator! In fact, I believe this is how the potential moderators for this board were solicited: just grab the list of all users with > X posts. It's easy, and tends to work pretty well.

...and there are several more as well IIRC but I think you get the general idea

Incidentally, the "built-in" psych tricks of this board are probably behind the fact that the forums continue for most people to be the main access point for jgo.org. Chris et al have not been trying to build a community around jgo (I say this based on their previous posts which make clear they have other priorities), but the authors of YABB had already built a lot of community support in - so the board continues to have a tendency to much greater community interest. FYI, this isn't merely because it's an interactive medium - I've seen (and helped build) web-based systems which were as interactive as this forum without having a forum of their own; careful community mgmt can outstrip simple interactive media.

java-gaming.org is not responsible for the content posted by its members, including references to external websites,
and other references that may or may not have a relation with our primarily
gaming and game production oriented community.
inquiries and complaints can be sent via email to the info‑account of the
company managing the website of java‑gaming.org